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Delhi's love affair with coffee!
With winters setting in, coffee joints are introducing various schemes to woo coffee addicts in Delhi.
Coffee is now said to be the favourite beverage among the youths these days and with winters setting in, coffee joints are introducing various schemes to woo coffee addicts in the capital.
"Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis - a good hot cup of coffee", were the famous lines of Alexander King.
And for many of us now, a new day starts with our morning coffee. While tea has ruled for long, a visible preference for coffee can be seen and can take the liberty of saying that having a cup has become an obsession for many.
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| Coffee: Favourite beverage among the youths |
"The taste of coffee has come in this generation a lot more than it was in the previous generation. People have shifted from tea to coffee if you take me for example, even I have shifted from tea to coffee from the last couple of years. And so the demand is more now," added Saurav Agarwal, a ardent coffee lover.
Surging ahead of the home made coffee, people love visiting the numerous coffee pubs and cafes that are mushrooming in different corners of the city these days.
Coffee chains like Barista, Nescafe and Cafe Coffee Day have become hugely popular hangouts for the cities' young and trendy consumers. And with winters gripping the city, these days the crowd in these joints are all the more.
"With the kind of weather, you just want to have something hot and the choice is coffee," said Lavanya.
"I love coffee. I have come from Belarus and I am happy that in India too we have so many coffee joints like it was there," added Natasha from Belarus and who is now settled in Delhi after marriage.
Coffee joints have also become a favourite hangout for the students staying away from their home and waiting for a cup of hot beverage after classes. "We have four to five cups of coffee everyday and with so many coffee joints to choose from it is really nice," said Akhim, a student.
These cafes and pubs are not just places where people buy coffee; they also try to sell a certain lifestyle.
The chains, with their glitzy interiors and designer furniture, are targeted at urban, upper-middle-class and rich Indians. Coffee served in these chains includes latte, mocha, cappuccino, expresso, friazzo and even the perennial old favourite, Madras filter coffee. And with winters setting in, many of them have
come up with different schemes to woo the customers in their own way.
For example, Barista offers health-friendly drinks like non-alcoholic coffee concoctions and decafinated coffee. "This winters, we have done many things, which are new. One is non-alcoholic coffee concoctions, which are basically different ranges of coffee of different flavours from abroad," said Brotin
Banerjee, Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, Barista.
"To establish this coffee culture, to establish our coffee credentials further and establish a leadership culture in coffee, we are introducing things called decafinated coffee because of health. Today health is a big thing world wide where we are introducing decafenated low fat coffee," he adds.
Whereas Cafe Coffee Day offers coffee at what they claim as the "most affordable rate" with add on promotions and complimentary gifts.
"We do try to be the most affordable in our segment. I don't think anybody can contest that. We try very hard to give customers value for their money with add on promotions, add on complimentary gifts at times running at cafe coffee day, a lot can happen over coffee," said Shabri Prabhakar, Assistant Manager, Marketing.
The Arabs are generally believed to be the first to brew coffee. Around 1650 a Muslim pilgrim from India named Baba Budan returned from Mecca with seven seeds of the wonder bean, Coffee. He planted them in the Chandragiri Hills of Karnataka, whose climate and altitude proved to be ideal for coffee cultivation.
Then the East India Company while exploring commercial avenues in India, discovered a gold mine in coffee cultivation and developed it into a viable plantation crop.
